In practice, loading lines are known, in the case of which products, such as shingled sausage or cheese slices, are fed into thermoformed troughs provided on a thermoform packaging machine. The products are here transferred from a slicer to a feed belt system, whereupon the products are conveyed along a conveying line on a plurality of conveyor belt segments, which are arranged one after the other in the conveying direction, up to an infeed station of the thermoform packaging machine.
It is known from practice that the products continuously provided by the slicer are first distributed onto conveying tracks by means of a distributing belt belonging to the feed belt system. Immediately afterwards, a plurality of products is oriented on a conveyor belt downstream of the distributing belt according to a product row arranged transversely to the conveying direction. The product rows oriented transversely to the conveying direction are then conveyed by means of a plurality of successively positioned buffer belts and, further downstream, they are fed at an infeed station of the thermoform packaging machine into the respective packaging troughs provided there.
For the known conveying process, the conventional feed belt system comprises, successively when seen in the conveying direction, the following conveyor belt arrangement starting at the slicer and extending up to the infeed station of the thermoform packaging machine: distributing belt, orienting belt, buffer belts and infeed belt. This kind of arrangement is schematically shown in FIG. 1.
In the known arrangement, the orienting belt must be as short as possible, since products are continuously fed thereto via the distributing belt from the slicer, which is positioned further up-stream. In order to be able to cope with the product quantity produced by the slicer, only one transverse row of products is therefore produced on the orienting belt at a time. In view of the fact that the known orienting belt, arranged directly downstream of the distributing belt in the conveying direction and used for establishing a transverse row of the products arriving thereon, comprises a plurality of separately controllable orienting belts with short dimensions, which are juxtaposed when seen in the conveying direction, the orienting belt is structurally difficult to manufacture. In addition, a plurality of products can thus only be taken up on the orienting belt module in closely spaced initial formations.
An essential disadvantage has been found to be that the products, which have already been precisely oriented in transverse rows by the orienting belt, must subsequently cross a plurality of buffer belts, before they arrive at the infeed station. However, when crossing the buffer belts, which are arranged one after the other in the conveying direction, and in particular when crossing the respective intermediate transfer gaps, and even more so in the case of major speed changes, it may happen that the products, which had first been arranged precisely in transverse rows by the orienting belt, will get out of place, i.e. they will change their previously precisely oriented position. It will then not be possible to execute a precise infeed process downstream of the buffer belt section according to a predetermined product arrangement into the packaging troughs provided on the thermoforming packaging machine.
Against this background, it is the object of the present invention to improve a conveyor belt system in view of the technical problems caused by the prior art. Furthermore, it is the object of the present invention to provide a corresponding method to operate a conveyor belt system.